Monthly Archives: August 2012

So with traditional schools starting up the new school year soon, what better topic to look at then classroom management. With all the focus on PBIS (positive behavior) these days and all the rewards, a technological solution could not be far behind. And now you see it–Class Dojo. Class Dojo is a website that allows a teacher a FREE space to add their students, then track their behavior. You can use a tablet or even your phone–any device connected to the internet.

In the program you can use the default criteria or mix and match with your own. For instance, you can give points to students who come in on time. You can reward creativity. You can remove points for disruptions. And the idea is that you keep the scores up on an LCD projector so everyone can always see. My wife has been using this and she does agree that students do get motivated with seeing their points up on the screen. All about that immediate feedback.

Financial Literacy is one of the big topics we need to work on with students. I remember being in 6th grade, having a fake paper checkbook and needing to complete a checking statement and writing out checks. Great lessons there. Now we have all these online resources available to us to make it so much easier. Mint is one such online resource available to us, and they even provide a variety of resources to teachers. You can find great resources, including games, lessons, and other things here.

So you want to learn computer programming, but not sure where to start? Or you did find places to start, but said places were way above your head? Then why not head over to How to Program With Java for a great, easy to understand, blog. This blog starts with the user off the street with no experience. They do a good job explaining the basics, such as variables. For instance:

To me, a variable is simply a way to store some sort of information for later use, and we can retrieve this information by referring to a “word” that will describe this information.

Much better definition than many of the others I saw over the years. So how I envision this is sharing this with a middle or high school class. We talk about 21st Century Skills and activities, but here you go. Abandon the book reports and get your students coding. Make projects, landscapes of literature, science experiments. Your students will be able to pick this up quickly!

So when my district finally settled on a tablet brand, many thought we went with Samsung, just because of my feelings for Apple. Yes, that definitely played a role, but conveniently, we struggled to get the iPads to consistently connect to our enterprise wireless network. So ta-da…Samsung Galaxy Tabs for all. That pleased me, and it worked out for us, but I continued to have a nagging ‘maybe we should look at Apple’ in the back of my head. That changed. My wife brought home her iPad issued to her from her school. She works in a different school system. She wanted to record some audio, then email it to someone. No problem, right? Unfortunately the free version of the app did not let you email past a size. Again, no problem. We’ll just go into the file system…um…how do you get to the file system? Ok, so not on the device, but when I plug it in…um…no problem, I’ll check online…um… So seriously, Apple? You cannot trust your users enough to get into the file system? Wow. Major epic fail. I go into the file system of Android all the time to back up photos, place documents, etc, etc. Yes, I know you can go through iTunes, but I do not want that hassle. Just give me access to the file system. Look at all these great apps for Android like Wifi Explorer, AirDroid, that let you do it over a webpage. Well, those guilty feelings of mine are gone. I confidently know Android is the right direction for us now.